Two infinitely long, charged wires have uniform linear charge densities λ 1 and λ 2 , respectively. These wires are each placed in two perpendicular planes at a distance of d apart.
Find the force of interaction between the wires.
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yeah, your derivation and result was correct.
I think you wrote the cosine expression in terms of distances.
you found my problem interesting ?
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Very interesting. I think it belongs in the "Medium" category though.
It would be interesting to try to generalize this for any tilt angle (with 0 degrees being perfectly parallel and 90 degrees being perfectly perpendicular).
Thank you for your feedback. Keep solving :-)
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I don't think this is an "Easy" problem, unless there's some shortcut I'm not aware of. Anyway, here's a "not so easy" derivation of the result.
Wire 1 has linear charge density λ 1 , and Wire 2 has linear charge density λ 2 . The wires are separated by a distance d . x is the position along Wire 2, relative to the position of Wire 1. From Gauss's Law, we know that the electric field strength from Wire 1 is:
E 1 = 2 π ϵ 0 r λ 1 = 2 π ϵ 0 x 2 + d 2 λ 1
The horizontal component is (we needn't consider the vertical component):
E 1 H = E 1 x 2 + d 2 d = 2 π ϵ 0 ( x 2 + d 2 ) λ 1 d
The horizontal force on an infinitesimal segment of Wire 2 is:
d F H = E 1 H λ 2 d x = 2 π ϵ 0 ( x 2 + d 2 ) λ 1 λ 2 d d x
The total horizontal force is:
2 π ϵ 0 λ 1 λ 2 d ∫ − ∞ ∞ x 2 + d 2 d x = 2 π ϵ 0 λ 1 λ 2 d d 1 t a n − 1 ( d x ) ∣ ∣ ∣ − ∞ ∞ = 2 π ϵ 0 λ 1 λ 2 ( 2 π − ( − 2 π ) = 2 ϵ 0 λ 1 λ 2